"A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that often addresses issues and how to solve them. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions." (from Wikipedia) In this case, the "papers" are all written by a particular "White" and so are "almost" White Papers. That means that the opinions expressed on this blog are my own, and should not be attributed to my employer, or any other person or institution with whom I am affiliated.

Both of these short “editorial” pieces ask an interesting and somewhat philosophical question about the role of the university in student “entrepreneurship.” The linked articles (by Nicholas Thompson, editor at Newyorker. com and Stanford alum) question some of the more “intense” levels of involvement that many universities are embracing, with schools like Stanford as our role models. Now, I’ve always tried to resist using “what Stanford does” as a yardstick–I even included a nice little slide in one of my presentations, showing little lemmings jumping off a cliff with a cartoon balloon from one shouting as it fell “…well, Stanford does it!” But the urge to follow their lead is almost irresistible.

At its heart, this is nothing more than a bit of “peer pressure” since every university is looking to establish a reputation–presumably a “good one” too–showing how their own activity reflects the “best” new practices. In some cases, it may be near impossible to replicate these practices (we’re no Silicon Valley) so at least that provides some protection from following all the yellow brick roads “we” see. It’s easy though, to wish your own institutions of higher education could collect all the accolades that a school like Stanford receives.

After some reflection, I realized that the piece reminds me a bit of the book I’m reading” (audiobook format as usual these days, so “listening to” is more precise) “Antifragile” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (click here for his website and here for the Amazon link to the book–note I am not an Amazon affiliate, just being helpful). Now, that is a bit of a leap, but I tend to think that way, so it’s not surprising if you know me very well at all!

In the book, which I confess to not having finished as yet, Nassim Taleb refers to a phenomenon he calls “lecturing birds on how to fly” and makes some very disparaging references to Havard Business school faculty (not Stanford faculty, but I’m betting he would do so if he wasn’t more centered on the east coast). In many ways, his argument is also along the lines of a sort of “chicken and egg” situation (even though chickens don’t fly). As I see it, a school like Stanford provides a lot of opportunities that “attract” very entrepreneurial students, very smart ones at that, and then the “university” manages to get those little entrepreneurial birds to fly. Many other universities then follow Stanford’s lead on how to teach their own students the Stanford way of entrepreneurship, since it has such great success.

If you look at it that way, it seems that some of the things critiqued may be simply circumstantial, and Stanford isn’t really “doing” anything except meeting some expectations of the students already there. Is this “harmful” to Stanford in some way, as Mr. Thompson is pointing out? Perhaps, but it may be more true to say that Stanford is being given credit for ‘causal’ influence that isn’t there. In some cases, maybe there is also a negative impact on students (or more precisely, on their education). Certainly, I think it’s a good idea to ask the questions…but is someone going to try to find an answer? Regardless, it serves as one more example for me to use when people try to propose the next “me too” model for my own programs or projects.

This is hard to resist–who among us doesn’t feel the need for validation that takes the form “well, I found out that X is doing things this way”? As happened regularly, I was once contacted by a colleague at another university (no names), who was engaged in a contract negotiation with a company. The company had cited my own university as an example of a peer who had “agreed to these terms” so she called me to confirm. One of the reasons she did so was that the terms seemed to be “less desirable” and she seemed to suspect the company was not telling the entire truth. Now, at this point, I didn’t want to get into exactly what my organization had (or had not) agreed to, since there were too many complicating issues to explain. But I did give her one piece of advice that seemed to help. I told her, “Just go back with–even if “University X” agreed to those terms, that’s not a good reason for us to agree.” As I explained, there might BE good reasons for her to accept those terms, but the company needed to work through those specific reasons with her–not just “by reference” insist that since another university agreed, it was OK.

Otherwise, I am continuing to “read” the Taleb book, and I hope that there are some more interesting issues raised. As I understand, Nassim Taleb is nothing if not interesting, and I’m looking forward to learning more about some of his insights on innovation.